A reader gave us the heads up about an ongoing renovation at 2345 E Cumberland St., a huge house just a few doors down from the excellent Memphis Taproom.

Long sealed

Bar on the corner

Developer BMK Properties purchased this property in January from the City of Philadelphia, through the Public Property Listings we’ve told you about in the past. The price for this monstrous house with wonderful bones was $102,500, according to public record. Amazingly, the city sat on this property for over a decade.

Since the door was open, we took a peek inside. Quite a bit of demo has taken place already, and new framing has gone up on a couple of exterior walls, from what we could tell. We also noticed a number of original details that remained, including the original front door and what looked like 12′ interior doors that probably led to the parlor at one time. We didn’t get more than a few steps inside, as we didn’t wish to disturb the guys working on the site.

Great looking cornice and lintels prove that there are some great exterior details that remain as well

The workers at the site were too preoccupied to answer any questions, so we don’t know whether this building will be split up into condos or maintained as a 3,200 sqft single family home. And frankly, as long as they’re able to restore the exterior appropriately, it doesn’t really matter in our book. It’s just cool to see an old house with such wonderful details being brought back to life after years in purgatory.

We imagine the workers will be soon be frequenting the Memphis Taproom hot dog truck, opening this Saturday. Ah, we missed it by just a couple of days!